Lainey Davis, $3.99, ISBN 979-8201843137
Contemporary Romance, 2022

Lainey Davis’s verbosely titled Lesson Plans: An Education in Romance… wait, is that Matt Walsh on the cover?

Oh, don’t worry, I won’t throw a fit like some melodramatic terminally online weirdo, because I personally have no issues with Mr Walsh. One, I’ve seen him without facial hair, and this is one fellow whose sex factor drops down to negative integers without said facial hair. Two, he can be amusing in a cringe-inducing way when he talks like a nagging grandfather, and I realize he’s actually younger than me. Three, his voice won’t drive me insane after five minutes unlike his employer Ben Shapiro, who always sounds like a squeaky robotic rodent.

On the whole, however, I don’t really care to watch the Daily Israel Wire one way or the other, as my preference these days is to avoid political grifters from both sides that infest the online scene.

Right, right, this story. Sigh, it’s a less interesting topic to talk about, unfortunately.

Our hero Doug Rogers is a teaching assistant working toward getting a master’s degree in education, and he is assigned to teach first-year composition to some nursing students. To folks that are outside the US and scratching their head at this, let’s just say that it’s a US education thing. Every university or college has that one compulsory subject that everyone hates but is forced to take, and I guess first-year comp is the punishment that these students in the US must bear along with crippling student debts.

Anyway, our hero begins lusting after nursing student Amy Peterson, which is totally professional and ethical.

By the fourth night of class, I realize in horror that I’m staring at Amy’s—at my student’s—nipples as they harden in her scrub top as she sits in the frigid classroom, listening to a peer read aloud from her essay draft.

She is not wearing a bra underneath her scrub top when she’s doing her nurse thing? Is she planning ahead in case she gets to live out her naughty nurse fantasies with some patient?

Anyway, Amy scoffs at the idea of being forced to attend this class, and all rational 30-year modern women, she blames Doug for her being forced to plant her rear end in his class.

Not that it stops her from planting her rear end on his… other thing, but she spends the entire story acting like a grouchy and snappy bulldog wanting to bite someone because she can’t get a grip on herself. She also flails around like the worst student ever, refusing to follow even rudimentary ground rules, which makes me question just what kind of nurse she is going to be when she’s an emotional train wreck with meager time management skills.

She’s already buckling under the pressure of juggling her personal life with her studies, so I’m sure she’d be amazing to get along with, much less work alongside, once she’s a full-fledged nurse.

The only reason Doug seems to want her so bad is that she’s hot. That’s basically it.

Clearly, this story is written to be fantasy fodder, presenting this scenario of how the heroine can be a huge mess with questionable intelligence and teetering on being a nervous wreck to boot, but that’s okay because there is always this one hot guy that will take all her crap and smile because he is hot for her.  That’s also how I know that Doug is fiction—he’s slumming with someone like Amy, so there’s no reason why he should just stand there and tolerate her irrational antics when he could get laid with anyone anywhere else.

While I’m sure this fantasy may work well with some readers, I personally close this thing feeling glad that I’m free of Amy’s perpetual ill moods and messy personal drama. Given how poorly Amy deals with stress and pressure, I’m sure this “romance” will crash and burn spectacularly eventually. That’s not exactly the kind of take home feels I’d like to have from a romantic story!